i went on a diet earlier in the year, around may-june i think it was. soon after, i started walking for an hour+(approx. 4-5 miles) in the mornings six times a week. i am not a compulsive 'weigher', so i'm not sure what i weighed when i started. my best guess is 275-285, which means in this pic i'm about 275ish. when i finally did weigh myself in mid-june, i weighed 267. by the time i went to the beach in mid-august i weighed 235.

as of this writing, i weigh 227. doing the simple math shows that my weight loss has slowed drastically. when i hit 225 about a month after returning from my beach trip, my weight loss stopped entirely, and i have spent the last 2-3 months fluctuating from 224 to 230. i have hit what dieters call a 'plateau'. and plateau's suck, especially this one. here's why.

first, i am still approximately 60 pounds overweight, based upon my ideal weight(166lbs) for my height(5'10" or so). this means that i have not even gotten from obese into overweight and have not even left morbid obesity yet. and yet most people who know me rave about how skinny i look. when i tell them i still have 60 pounds to lose, some ask where i'm planning on losing it from. even my sister has told me that if i lose another 40 pounds i would look 'scary skinny'. this is very frustrating since when i look in the mirror, i don't see some skinny guy looking back at me, so i know most of this is just me being much smaller than i used to be. due to the fact that i am 'large-framed', the chances of me easily getting down to 166 are small, but i had hoped to reach at least 190 and maintain my weight there.

second, my plan was to wait until i reached 215 or so, and then switch from walking 6 times a week to jogging 3 times a week and working out 3 times a week. however, my body seems to be bound and determined to keep me from reaching this goal. i fear i will have to abandon this plan and just start jogging and crunching anyway.

i do not wish to sound like i am whining and complaining, because honestly i feel better physically and mentally than i have in years. i can move around and hurry without worry and i don't lie awake at night listening to the (then) erratic rhythm of my heart and worrying that it was just going to stop. and i don't feel that when people(the ones who don't know me) look at me all they are seeing is some really fat guy, and associating me with all the normal stereotypes of that. it's just that i had planned to see this thing through to a certain point, and now my body is basically saying that it does not wish to go any farther.